Month: August 2008

A reader writes:

Part of me understands why you linked to this website.  You bring things to our attention we might not otherwise see.  A bigger part of me though (albeit the hormonal side –  I’ll explain later) can not figure out for the life of me, with all that is going on in the world, why anyone would want to read such garbage.  I honestly can’t imagine ever wanting to read the thoughts of a 24 year old on any subject, but to read them on her impending abortion certainly does the abortion movement no favors.  I’m 19 weeks pregnant.  I feel my baby move and have the occasional bout of hiccups.  At 6 weeks I saw my baby’s heart beating.  At 5 weeks she is discussing the pros and cons of a pharmaceutical procedure as opposed to “vacuuming the pregnancy” out.  She cant even allow herself to call it a fetus. 

Her disregard and disgust for pregnancy, as outlined in her entry about morning sickness is palpable.  If I weren’t so consumed with my desire to bitch slap her, I’d feel nothing but pity.  I’d like to fast forward 10 years from now to a point where she might be expecting a baby that she desperately wants and is in love with the moment she holds that pregnancy test in her hands.  Will she immediately be avoiding starbucks and suddenly be drawn to organic versions of her favorite foods like I am?  Will she be planning a nursery and counting the seconds until her next ultrasound just so she can see her baby again? Instead of anticipating blood as evidence that her ‘problem’ is thankfully over, will she instead be laying on her bed trying not to cry, waiting for the doctors office to call because she unexpectedly found some?  How sad for this unborn baby to only have come at an inconvenient time for its mother.  And to think she expresses surprise that there are no blogs ballyhooing the joys of abortion?  Really? This little girl is doing herself no favors in documenting her thoughts at this time in her life.  They will be there in all their shameful glory forever, and she will most certainly live to regret it.

Bradford Plumer picks through Shai Agassi’s plan for the future of the electric car.

Greg Mankiw notes an unexpected benefit of our high gas prices—highway deaths have declined sharply.

An ethno-linguistic analysis of Obama’s half-sister’s name.

Matt Welch thought the Democrats blew it:

The Democratic Party has just blown almost one-quarter of its convention on some of the most tepid personal-trivia testimonials and no-really-they-watched-Brady-Bunch crapola I have heard since my last Amway convention. Only with much less spirit. Wait, your mother loved you? IZ VOAT DIMOKRAT! The Republicans kicked the stuffing out of the Dems in last year’s convention season, in part due to an uproarious and combative opening night. Can Democrats even hit a ball off a tee without irritating the hell out of everybody?

Jonathan Chait:

It’s possible that the calculation was that they had to present her with a soft image, and so they couldn’t have any red meat on her night — that it was worth sacrificing a night to have a knockout Michelle Obama speech. Who knows? Maybe it’s worth it.

Marc:

Could the Obama campaign have found a more compelling Republican to kick off the primetime hour? Yes they could have.

Jonah Goldberg:

I thought she did exactly what she needed to do, said what she needed to say and avoided saying the sorts of partisan, hard-hitting stuff she normally says on the stump that would have violated the first-do-no-harm rule. It was a nice speech, well delivered and not so over-the-top with her love of country refrains that it felt forced. Whether it made much of a difference over the long haul I have no idea.

Ezra Klein:

I can’t decide if the faux-intimacy of Daddy tele-parenting in the middle of the convention was a bit too precious. The beginning was good — "now you know why I asked her out so many times. You want a persistent president." — but the "look after mommy and the girls bit" felt staged. On the other hand, I’m a cynical, coastal elite type and could just be insufficiently appreciative of camp.

Jason Zengerle:

Michelle Obama introduced herself as a sister, a wife, a mother, and a daughter–which are all incredibly important identities. But those identities don’t reveal her full person–the Princeton and Harvard Law grad, the corporate attorney, the hospital executive–which were parts of her life that she barely mentioned. Instead, she gave us predictable pap like "the Barack Obama I know today is the same man I fell in love with 19 years ago." Was her speech better than, say, Teresa Kerry’s cringe-inducing performance from four years ago? No doubt. But watching her speak–and thinking back on some of the remarks she made earlier in the campaign–you got the sense there was so much more she could have said.

A reader writes:

I am a former military police officer and she made me cry.

I didn’t see Juan Williams after the speech.

The notion that tonight should have been about ripping the bark off the president seems to me misplaced. No one needs to be persuaded that the country is on the wrong track. We have endured one of the worst presidencies in American history, a stalling economy, and a war that was as deceptively packaged as it was poorly executed. The wrong track number is at 80 percent. What was necessary tonight was rebutting the only real weapon the Republicans have: dragging Obama into the mud, throwing every extremist attack they can at him, painting him as a commie, alien, anti-American freak. For good measure, they had tried to paint Michelle as an angry black radical.

They failed. There was nothing more American than the way the Obamas spoke of their story. It made them more appealing to the white working class and the black working class. It defused the smears. And, taken as whole, it also gave the Democrats some good feeling with the Kennedys.

There was plenty I didn’t like about this night, as you can tell if you scroll down. But it succeeded in the most important task. Michelle did it. She more than did it. She struck fear in the GOP tonight. Their lies about the Obamas will fail. As they should.

One of the best, most moving, intimate, rousing, humble, and beautiful speeches I’ve heard from a convention platform. Maybe she should be running for president. You don’t need any commentary from me. This was a home-run. And sincere. Thank God that in the end, the truth struggles out there. Just look at her mother’s face.

(Photo of Michelle and brother Craig: Paul J Richards/Getty.)

It hits you, doesn’t it? I’m watching all the usual biography for a first lady and president and listening to her brother and realizing: black Americans – proud, unapologetic, culturally mainstream African-Americans – are now running this show. I knew this was coming. But watching it, even in these tiny ways, is striking.

How great that is; and how long a time it has been coming. Whatever happens in this crazy election season, this matters.

I know I’m a little cranky tonight but this was tedious, vacuous, pandering, useless pap. And the kids weren’t "fantastic."